Baloney. I don't think it's "black magic", but as a software engineer with some deep familiarity with my tool chain I'm not going to pretend that I could ever be as productive as some of these folks. It's like when I see another post about a Fabrice Bellard project, and I think "he gets done in a year what it would take me about a career".

I don't understand this fetishization of "everyone has nearly equal ability" in the face of tons of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

That's not all it is. Some people are just better than others. No matter how hard every tries to be the best football or basketball player, only an extremely small set of people even have the chance to make it. There are physical traits they'll never have and mental fortitude to use those traits. You can't grow yourself to 7 ft tall and you never will be able to. What makes you think the brain is any different.

I wish I could upvote this more, because it's proven by a couple of the other replies to my original comment.

No more than people think making it to the Olympics is "black magic".